Trekking Barris: December 2016

Guilin to Yangzhou

Christmas day was spent traveling - bus to Changsha and train to Guilin in time for the night market. The next morning we took a 4.5 boat ride down the Li River which was gorgeous. The next few days we spent in Yangzhou - exploring the city - biking, hiking and via bamboo raft. We also saw the evening light show - Impression Sanjie Liu which uses the river and mountain backdrop as it's stage with hundreds of rafts with lanterns moving across the water and timed with music.

Zhangijajie

Zhangijajie is a very popular Asian tourist spot sort of like a mini- Las Vegas with a fabulous evening show out of the Pullman Hotel, a grand canyon with glass bridge and a gorgeous national park with lots of trails and vistas (including Avatar Mountain in the recent movie) and lots of hotels. We visited in the off season but were fortunate as the park had just reopened.

The first day we visited the grand canyon, glass bridge and then hike. We weren't allowed to bring in our big camera so had to leave it checked in which later proved to be a problem as we hiked down and exited miles away. I found the bridge to be terrifying, but of course the rest didn't so were taking jumping photos on it. The hike down into the slot canyon involved a lot of steps, then very steep slides where they gave us canvas to tie around out waist to minimize friction/dirt on our bums and gloves, and more steps. At one point there was a zip line but the kids were too light to go down it. The trail ended with a boat ride out of the canyon to a very different spot than we started. We could tell it needed to loop back but never saw anyone go the other way. At the end fortunately there was a guy with a van who must be some sort of Chinese uber service as he was happy to take us up to our car for a fraction of a taxi price, and then after retrieving our left camera, back to our hotel which previously had taken 3 hours by 2 different local buses.

The next few days we caught our own transportation and saved a lot of time.

Here are a few pictures of this beautiful spot.

Xian

Overnight train Z19 from the Beijing to Xian was fun. We shared our cabin with 2 others guys - one very loud snorer which I hear is a requirement to fully count the China train experience.

The warrior complex has expanded since our last visit in 2006 and now has a museum, places to take photos that look like you are surrounded with the statues, and more areas excavated. The girls were fascinated by the concept and truly wondered if at any moment these larger than life statues would just wake up and move.

The statues were buried with the first Emperor of China approx. 210-209 BCE and the numbers of statues are estimated at more than 8000 soldiers, 130 chariots with 520 horses and 150 cavalry horses.

We also went to the Drum and Bell Tower and timed this perfectly to catch a music show.

We spent less than a day in Xian arriving at 8 AM on the train and leaving about 8 PM on a plane, but hit all the sights.

Here are a few pics.

Beijing

Here are photos from Beijing. Although winter it wasn't as cold as expected and the smog/air pollution was at a minimum. The subway was easy to figure out and more people speak English here than in Japan which helped with getting around. Our hotel was in a converted old hutuong in Dong Cheng district.